Jovica Stanišić

Jovan "Jovica" Stanišić (Serbian Cyrillic: Јован "Јовица" Станишић; born 30 July 1950) is a Serbian former intelligence officer who served as the head of the State Security Directorate (RDB) within the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia from 1992 until 1998. He was removed from the position in October 1998, months after the outbreak of Kosovo War.

Although very little was known about him during the 1990s, he is widely seen as the "mastermind and conductor of controlled chaos" during the large part of Yugoslav Wars. Despite being the closest person to the President of Serbia Slobodan Milošević, with enormous impact on wartime events, he kept permanent contacts with all the factors involved in the conflict. Allegedly, he was removed in 1998 from the key intelligence position due to disagreements with Mirjana Marković and the Minister of Internal Affairs Vlajko Stojiljković, as he opposed the excessive use of force in Kosovo.

Stanišić was prosecuted for war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1991 to 1995, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) together with Franko Simatović. He was initially acquitted on 30 May 2013 by the ICTY for his role in the wars but the verdict was later overturned on 15 December 2015 after successful appeal by the prosecutors (ICTY Appeals Chamber). The retrial before the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) has commenced on 13 June 2017. The base of Stanišić and Simatović's operations was revealed to be in western Bosnia, where they commanded regional forces. On 30 June 2021, he was found guilty under counts of murder, deportation, forcible transfer and persecution as crimes against humanity that occurred during the Bosanski Šamac ethnic cleansing, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. On appeal, his sentence was increased to 15 years in 2023.